Oct 10, 2016

Errors In Applying WEP

From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

SSA [Social Security Administration] needs to improve its controls to ensure WEP [Windfall Elimination Provision] is
timely and
accurately applied
for Federal pensions. We determined
WEP
should have been applied to 14 of the 250 beneficiaries sampled
.
We did not identify any beneficiaries for whom GPO should have
been applied. Although
SSA was aware these 14
beneficiaries had
a government pension, the Agency did not reduce their benefit
payments for WEP. The 14 beneficiaries received about
$372,000 in overpayments. Based on our sample results
, we
estimate SSA overpaid about $129 million in Old-Age, Survivors
and Disability
Insurance benefits to about 4,900 beneficiaries.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

Does anyone really care about this? OIG repeatedly files these reports. This is a minor inefficiency in the grand scheme of things. With the workload demands the Agency faces, this is pretty irrelevant. If Congress cared about service delivery they would fund the agency adequately. If they do not want to fund the Agency adequately they should consider simplifying existing policy by eliminating or revising complex offset policies (WEP, Windfall, WC/PDB offset). This report is meaningless as long as the hearing backlog exists, people are losing their lives over that. - Field Office Operations Supervisor